1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic analyzer for performing qualitative and quantitative analyses of living samples, such as blood and urine. More particularly, the present invention relates to an automatic analyzer provided with a display for displaying an operating screen.
2. Description of the Related Art
An automatic analyzer for analyzing the quantities of particular components in living samples, such as blood and urine, or detecting the presence of a particular antigen or antibody has been more increasingly employed primarily in large-scaled hospitals and test centers for the reasons that the automatic analyzer can more quickly perform measurements than manual operations and has higher reproducibility of the analysis results. In some of recent situations, a plurality of automatic analyzers are installed and operated by one clinic test operator for the purposes of increasing analysis efficiency and saving time and labor required.
In such a situation, the test operator has to check a display of each analyzer or come close to each analyzer to directly look the operating states of analyzer mechanisms in order to confirm conditions in the progress of analyses in the individual automatic analyzers.
In recent automatic analyzers, however, each analyzer is covered with a cover for safety or other reasons, and it is difficult to recognize the operating states of analyzer mechanisms by looking at them from a distance.
Also, when checking the display, the test operator is required to closely look at an image on a display screen and cannot recognize the operating state of each analyzer at a glance. Further, because recent displays usually have the screen saver function to prevent burning of the display screen, the image on the display screen cannot be viewed once the screen saver is started.
Though not being included in the technical field of the above-described automatic analyzer, Patent Document 1 (JP,A 2003-290196) discloses a medical image capturing system with the function of, when information to be notified of a user, such as run of image capturing or addition of a reservation, arrives via no input units, switching over a screen to be able to display that information even during the execution of a screen saver.